UN reports atrocities in Congo

Armed militia groups in the Democratic Republic of the Congo kidnapped hundreds of rival tribe members, tortured, mutilated, raped and decapitated their victims, and even boiled alive and ate two girls in front of their mother.

The humanitarian crisis in north-east Congo's embattled and lawless district of Ituri has replaced Sudan's Darfur region as the worst in the world, UN humanitarian chief Jan Egeland said yesterday, launching the report on abuses allegedly committed by the Forces of Patriotic Resistance in Ituri (FRPI). He said the fighting is killing thousands every month.

The UN report summarised testimony from witnesses gathered over a year. It found hundreds of people have been kidnapped by militias in the region and that some have been killed by torture and decapitation. Those not killed are held in labour camps and forced to work as fishermen, porters, domestic workers and sex slaves.

The UN mission in Congo said its human rights experts had interviewed 120 people who managed to escape the attacks by the FRPI, one of five ethnic armed groups operating in Ituri. The militia hails from the Ngiti tribe, which is close to the Lendu ethnic group, the Hema's main rivals in Ituri.

"Vital organs were said to have been cut off and used as magic charms. There were also reports that [ethnic] Hema children were thrown on to arrows stuck into the ground," the report said.

"Those responsible for atrocities will be brought to justice," Major General Patrick Cammaert, the Dutch Navy commander of UN forces in Congo, said. He said the UN mission in Congo (Monuc) was working to cut off weapons supplies to armed militias, which apparently entered the country from neighbouring Uganda across Lake Albert.

Monuc is resolved to "proceed with actions against the armed groups refusing to lay down weapons and integrate into the disarmament process," said Gen Cammaert. He called on the militiamen to follow the example set by one of the Ituri armed groups in the district of Aru, the Armed Forces for the Congolese People, which was allowing itself to be demobilised by peacekeepers and reintegrated into the community.

FRPI militiamen were suspected of killing nine UN peacekeepers in a February 25 ambush. On March 1, militiamen fired on Pakistani peacekeepers and the peacekeepers fought back, killing up to 60 fighters, UN officials said at the time.

Nearly 4 million people have died in Congo since the start of a six-nation war that began in 1998, most succumbing to hunger and disease brought on by the conflict. Though foreign armies left Congo under a peace accord in 2002, fighting has continued between government troops, militias and armed tribal groups.

Women in the region have been brutally victimised, and not only by the militias. An internal UN investigation concluded that peacekeepers had engaged in widespread sexual abuse of women in Congo.

Yesterday's report contained the first detailed charges of cannibalism to emerge since the war, when occasional charges surfaced.

The UN report was accompanied by a separate account from Zainabo Alfani in which she described to UN investigators being forced to watch rebels kill and eat two of her children in June 2003.

The report said, "In one corner, there was already cooked flesh from bodies and two bodies being grilled on a barbecue and, at the same time, they prepared her two little girls, putting them alive in two big pots filled with boiling water and oil." Her youngest child was saved, apparently because at six months old it didn't have much flesh.

The woman herself was gang-raped by the rebels and mutilated. Ms Alfani survived to tell her horror story, but she died in hospital on Sunday, nearly two years after the attack, of Aids contracted during her torture, the UN report said.

She gave her account in February, but the UN waited to publish it until after her death, for fear she would become a target for reprisal.

The head of Monuc, William Swing, is due to fly to New York along with Gen Cammaert, and will brief the UN security council on the DRC situation on Wednesday March 23. The next day, he is scheduled to address the US congress and hold talks with several US officials.